My Top S**thole Cities in the US

This is my list....other folks would have a different view.

1.  Detroit.  Up until the 1970s....it was a pretty good metropolitan area.  Since the 1990s....it's a s**thole.  There's entire neighborhoods of empty houses sitting there.

2.  East St Louis.  I've driven through the area once (needing to ship my car overseas).  There's just not much you can say about the town.  It's a s**thole.

3.  Birmingham, Alabama.  Back in the 1970s, you probably could have driven through and said it was a middle-class town.  Cocaine came, incompetent city management, crime, murder, etc.  It's a real s**thole today.  It's a place where you don't leave the interstate unless it's a real emergency or you need to fly out of the airport.

4.  Memphis.  There are a couple of neighborhoods and areas of the city where it's still safe and reasonable.  Most of the city though...is a s**thole.

5.  Up until the 1990s, Atlanta was in this growth and boom period.  Since the crime and mass urbanization period, most big organizations (including the Braves) are in the process of moving out of the city. 

6.  Baltimore.  Based on the murder rate, and crime....you don't go anywhere other than the downtown harbor area where cops are out in force.  They spent the last twenty years making this a major s**thole.

7.  Stockton, CA.  I traveled through the area back in the mid-1980s and kinda thought it was mostly a middle-class, working-class town.  You go and look at murders and crime today....it's a four-star s**thole.

8.  Cleveland.  Basically, the city died in the 1970s.  In 1950, they were near 915,000 residents....today, it's near 395,000 and shrinking.  It'll probably hit 250,000 by 2025.  By 2050, I think the city will actually reach 100,000 in population. 

9.  Buffalo.  Businesses left the area in the 1970s and 1980s.  There's just no reason to remain in the local area.

10.  New Orleans.  The curious thing here is that there is a  mile-by-mile area in the party district of town where you might want to stop off and have a couple of drinks and enjoy the festive attitude of the area.  But once you venture out of the protected area....this is mostly a s**thole.